Hi all, I am of course over the moon with SoTT expanded... particularly enjoying the vault CDs and the DVD... It's an amazing labout of love, all the way down to the photos, the design, the essays.

The problem is, I can't shake the feeling that this edition is still incomplete.

I mean, how can the "audio" story of SoTT be told in the absence of the full version of Crystal Ball, Dream Factory, Movie Star...

I know the reason for their absence is the fact tha they were released by in 1998.

Still, the fact that there is a tangible reason for their absence doesn't get rid of this feeling that the whole set, however wonderful it is (and it IS) has a big hole as far as vault tracks go.

So I created an additional, fourth CD with the vault tracks that were released in 1998:

- Crystal Ball (full version)
- Dream Factory
- Movie Star
- Crucial (alt.)
- Last Heart
- Make Your Mama Happy
- Sexual Suicide
- Good Love
+ I added the "sisters and brothers" version of Crystal Ball at the end.

Now it feels a lot more complete

No "Splash"? NPGMC released in 2001.

WhisperingDandelions said:

No "Splash"? NPGMC released in 2001.

Good one... Thanks!

WhisperingDandelions said:

No "Splash"? NPGMC released in 2001.

I think that fits in with the Parade sessions more than SOTT

mbdtyler said:

WhisperingDandelions said:

No "Splash"? NPGMC released in 2001.

I think that fits in with the Parade sessions more than SOTT

But basic tracking took place a week before "SexualSuicide", for instance, and only a few months before "Dream Factory" and "Last Heart".

[Edited 9/27/20 15:45pm]

WhisperingDandelions said:

parker said:

WhisperingDandelions said:

But basic tracking took place a week before "SexualSuicide", for instance, and only a few months before "Dream Factory" and "Last Heart".

[Edited 9/27/20 15:45pm]

The difference is Splash never appeared on a configuration of Dream Factory.

uhhh neither did about half the SOTT SDE Vault tracks...? "Can I Play with U?" was a few months shy of "Splash" recording date as well.

Well, regardless of the odd track... attempting to tell the full story of SoTT without at least the full Crystal Ball and Dream Factory just seems wrong... Those two at least NEED to be there.

[Edited 9/27/20 16:02pm]

a whole lot of them. lots. lots. lots.

MOVIE STAR (full version)

ETERNITY

NEON TELEPHONE..

are what I want, and hope to god that they will be on PARADE Deluxe.

[Edited 9/27/20 16:26pm]

WhisperingDandelions said:

parker said:

WhisperingDandelions said: The difference is Splash never appeared on a configuration of Dream Factory.

uhhh neither did about half the SOTT SDE Vault tracks...? "Can I Play with U?" was a few months shy of "Splash" recording date as well.

"Can I Play With U?" does seem like an abitrary pick, but I assume they included it to tie in with Miles Davis' appearance on the live DVD. Everything else in the set was either recorded after the release of Parade, or directly related to Dream Factory/SOTT.

edit: except for "Love And Sex", according to Princevault

[Edited 9/27/20 17:04pm]

LoveGalore said:

Michael Howe said that they left 1/3 of the appropriate tracks off. So that means, what, 20 other songs?

The quote is: "We sent hundreds of tracks for Bernie Grundman to master, and we kind of whittled it down from there. It was a tremendously forensic undertaking. We had to put about a third aside."

I was very excited at first thinking wow ok so there's more stuff already mixes and mastered and ready for release at a later date.

3x15=45.

Then the math don't add-up: how does 60 songs become "hundreds of songs"?

Is Mr. Howe making fun of us again?

databank said:

parker said:

mbdtyler said:

WhisperingDandelions said:

No "Splash"? NPGMC released in 2001.

I think that fits in with the Parade sessions more than SOTT

Yeah, it's a weird inbetween. ATWIAD came out what...April 1985? "Splash" was later that year. There's a little crossover in aesthetic and production back then, so it could sorta go on either sound-wife. But, I'd agree Parade is the logical place for it.

I do wish Joy in Repetition had been on this set. Even if it was with the dialogue segue connected to The Ball.

Let's just hope some of the missing tracks are scooped up by the Parade/Grafitti Bridge SDEs

LoveGalore said:

parker said:

I’d imagine early on in the process they had stuff that ended up outside the scope like The Flesh material, things like the early take of Witness, the stuff released on CB98, GB, Batman, and things most of us don’t even know about, like It Bes Like That Sometimes. That could easily be 60 tracks. L [Edited 9/27/20 17:59pm] [Edited 9/27/20 17:59pm] [Edited 9/27/20 18:00pm]

The keyword being "hundreds".... That's a whole fucking lot more than we know.

'Hundreds of track' doesn't necessarilly mean they are all distinct songs, most likely there were multiple versions of the same songs and then choosing the correct version was part of the, 'forensic undertaking'.

What about BOY U BAD, FRUSTRATION and PONY RIDE???????

3 Nigs Wathcing A Kung Fu Movie

LOL this is greatest track on the set. This is the real Prince. When have we've able to ever see that?

OperatingThetan said:

Yeah, I wanted a remastered version of the original 'Power Fantastic'also. The version used here is inferior and really only a curiosity.

SchlomoThaHomo said:

A clean Wally. Huge disappointment to release it that way with no explanation. He explained away Bold Generation from being sourced from cassette, which actually sounds pretty good, and then releases a garbled Wally and says nothing? The lossy sources for other tracks on the set should also be explained. No regular remastered Power Fantastic? That’s just wrong. It’s cool to have the first run through but not without the final version. That’s like releasing the first run through of How Come U Don’t Call Me without the final version. Unforgivable. The ‘98 Crystal Ball songs from this era. Yea yea rights issues but still. Can’t Stop-Girl O’ My-We Can Funk. Databank. I find it interesting that in other interviews (for 1999 SDE) Howe goes on about the painstaking process of figuring out Prince’s final versions of songs, and releasing those, but this time around touts the fact that they included a minute extra of When The Dawn that Prince had removed, and the extra lines and different ending on Rebirth Of The Flesh that Prince had also removed. Surely the edited versions were the final versions in these cases, correct? It seems his ethical standards aren’t quite consistent across projects.

There are obviously no rights issues with the alternate mixes of the CB98 tracks. Not including them was a curator's decision, not a matter of rights.

As for Power Fantastic (as well as the 1993 edit of Adore for that matter) I'd assume the idea is that since they were released in 1993, they belong with either or Come (since there was no 1993 album per se). In a way both edits were made in 1993, so they do not technically belong on a SOTT era release, and including the final mix of PF with the original intro (as made by P in 86) probably seemed redundant, it was either, or.

In a similar fashion, not including Good Love 88 and Feel U Up is somewhat baffling as well, but Michael Howe's reasoning was obviously that GL belongs with Lovesexy and that FUU belongs with Batman.

The instrumental version of Sign of the times would have been nice. Instead they included the edited version of the song which I find kind of unnecessary.

databank said: